


Being is Desire, Desire is Suffering

by henghost



Category: ITZY (Band)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Eating Disorders, F/F, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-02-29 22:21:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18787405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/henghost/pseuds/henghost
Summary: Yeji manages to keep her feelings hidden from Ryujin, but just when she makes some progress everything changes.





	1. Yeji

Ryujin and I were eating in the trainee’s cafeteria-- some awful half-rotten salad-- when I dropped a glass on the floor, and it shattered into a thousand pieces. Both of us scrambled to pick it up, and I felt a sharp, sudden flash at the tip of my index finger and blood poured out of me in thin spurts. Ryujin rushed to get a bandaid. 

I should mention here that we barely knew each other at this point. Of course, everyone knew her reputation-- so young and talented, ethereally beautiful. But we slept in different dorms and she was still in school and I wasn’t, so we hadn’t spoken much if at all. It was just out of a basic human kindness/social contract obligation that she offered to help me.

But so I gripped my finger, trying to stop the bleeding (it was really a lot of blood to be coming out of such a small cut) until she returned. She held my hand with the grip of a practiced nurse and swabbed it clean with a little alcohol pad, which stung. Maybe it was so much blood because my heart was hammering in my chest. I didn’t really understand why in that moment; all I knew was her touch was electric and she pouted her lips a little in concentration and her shoulder-length hair had to be brushed out of her face every so often. 

I think it wasn’t until that night that I realized I was in love. Which, this came as kind of a shock. I’d never been in love before, certainly not with a woman. I mean, you see on TV and in movies and in novels the way love looks, and as a young girl you’re supposed to identify with the princess or the femme fatale or whatever, and also be helplessly infatuated with the male lead. And I fawned as much as the next girl-- just because that’s what everyone else was doing-- but it never transferred to real life. Like, I saw guys who looked like they could be movie stars, saw the effect they had on my friends, but I never felt that myself. Not until Ryujin ran her fingers over mine in the dim, stinking cafeteria. 

It was conflicting, to be sure. It’s not something you ever really consider, especially not in Korea, that you might like someone of the same sex. Taboo. The kind of thing that could maybe stop you from debuting, which is all I’d ever wanted. So I tried to not let the thought go past that night.

Obviously, that was a fool’s errand. 

***

The next morning I showed up at the dancing lesson, bleary-eyed from the night spent agonizing. Ryujin was there, cross-legged on the hardwood floor in her school uniform, hair still a little wet from the shower.

"Yeji, right?" she asked. "They told me to come here this morning instead of school. After I'd already gotten dressed. Typical."

It's a strange saying, "my heart fluttered," and I never understood it until then. But it’s true: your heart  _ flutters.  _ It sprouted feathers and hopped up and down in my ribs. Because I knew that this group was going to debut together-- theoretically. 

“Um, yeah. You’re Ryujin right? Or, of course I know who you are. Everyone knows who Shin Ryujin is here. Ha ha.”

“You’re sweet.”

***

It’s kind of hard to explain what those practice studios are like if you’ve never been in one. The best comparison I’ve heard is a vision quest. The Native Americans, apparently, have this coming of age type ceremony where the adolescent is sent into the desert with no food and no water and they’re supposed to see visions and their true selves or whatever.

That’s what it’s like in those rooms, which become more like saunas over the course of the six hours you’re sweating in them. And the music plays over and over and over on repeat. It’s even worse if you can’t get a move down, too, because then you start to have real, deep-down existential anxiety, staring at yourself in the enormous mirror. It’s not unheard of that someone’ll  _ see  _ something or have a total psychological breakdown, especially when you consider the enormous stress most of these girls are under. 

But looking at Ryujin through the mirror, seeing her move in those tight black leggings, watching her unparalleled dancing ability, my crush-- I wouldn’t’ve called it a “crush” at that point, though-- sort of metastasized, spread all over my body. 

It got pretty bad, I’ll admit. Whenever she’d speak, for instance, I got overheated or something and had to sit down because of the nausea. Whenever she bumped into me, I had to excuse myself to the bathroom. 

Again, this was all very one-sided. I was invisible for all Ryujin cared. That might be kind of dramatic; she made small talk with me, even complimented me on my dancing once in a while(all such events were guaranteed to make me scream into my pillow later that night). But I wouldn’t say we were friends, and the thought of confessing to her or anything like that was so far out of the realm of possibility it might be more productive to consider what the surface of Pluto is like.

So it seemed totally out of the blue when she asked me to come to a temple with her. 

“My family’s Buddhist,” she explained. “It’s not a big deal, we just kind of meditate. There’s incense and little pillows to sit on. You don’t really have to do anything.”

“I, uh, absolutely. Yes. I’d love to.”

“...”

“Um, but can I ask why?”

“Well, I don’t know, I guess we’re supposed to get to know each other. We’re going to  _ debut  _ together, theoretically.”

“Theoretically.”

“And I guess I feel like I don’t know you very well. Like you’re an amazing dancer, and you’re really pretty, obviously. And I think it’d be good to get to each other more. Right?”

“Totally. Um, thank you so much. Y-you too. I mean you’re a great dancer and you’re really pretty. Too.” There was no way I wasn’t blushing.

“Cool. Tomorrow at ten?”

“Sounds good.”

Part of me was angry she could be so casual. 

***

That night, it was difficult to stave off the thoughts. It must’ve been a hundred degrees, and I lied on my bed in underwear and tried not to think about what I wouldn’t allow myself to call a  _ date.  _ Tried not to think about Ryujin at all, the line of her jaw, the curve of her lips, the little peek of her bra I’d gotten, the intelligence you could really physically  _ feel _ when you got close to her.

It was inevitable, really, that I ended up slipping a finger inside myself. It still felt somehow wrong, to be masturbating with images of a girl playing behind my eyes. But of course there was no way around it. Some pressure had to be relieved. 

 

***

The temple, located in a little alcove of Seoul, had been designed with great intentionality, you could tell. Every aspect of the meditation room had been placed with meaning and purpose, all to maximize symmetry and energy flow, so stepping into it was like stepping into another dimension. 

It was appropriate, then, that Ryujin looked extradimensional. She wore plain, baggy clothes meant to make her look demure, no doubt, but they had the opposite effect. She smelled clean. 

A woman in the corner kept saying “Being is desire, desire is suffering.”

“So yeah, just sit anywhere. I’m not trying to, like, indoctrinate you or anything, by the way,” Ryujin whispered. 

“Oh, I totally wasn’t thinking that. I’m really happy to be here.”

“Those are my parents over there.” She pointed to a man and a woman sat cross legged on two red cushions. They were at peace.

All the seats faced a kind of altar. There were massive tapestries and smoking sticks of incense and little gold statues of the Buddha. I crossed my legs under me and put my hands on my knees like I saw others were doing, and Ryujin did the same to my left. 

The woman in the corner began to say, “Open your mind, transfer your thoughts to the crystal ball. The universe is open, share your mind with it.”

I still have trouble determining if this next part is real or not, but as I sat there and tried to focus only my breathing, I stared at the tapestry in front of me. I think it was the Buddha or something, a young figure, pale and with black hair. But, I swear, his face  _ morphed  _ into Ryujin’s. It’s not like I was hallucinating-- it really changed in front of my eyes, the hair elongating and the jawline sharpening. I mean, of course I was hallucinating, probably the stress got to me (this kind of crush on Ryujin wasn’t the only thing on my mind, there was also the practicing and the caustic uncertainty re: whether I was going to debut or not; but I’m not focusing on that because it’s not strictly relevant to this story) because no one else looked puzzled. Ryujin, I could see out of the corner of my eye, had her eyes closed and breathed evenly. 

But I decided it was a bad idea to snap her out of her trance or whatever to tell her that I was seeing things. So I stared at the Ryujin in the tapestry and did as the chanting woman instructed: I gave my mind to her. Transferred all my thoughts to the smiling cloth. 

 

***

As I tossed and turned in my bed that night, I couldn’t shake the image of meditating Ryujin-- both the one who sat beside me and the one in the tapestry. It would make everything so easy if I really could project my thoughts to her. There would be no room for misunderstanding or for hurt feelings or any confusion at all. I could let her know how I felt, what I felt for her, plus all the other things that are impossible to get across in speech, and she would see me, truly see me, and then there’s no way she wouldn’t reciprocate. But maybe that’s optimistic, and it’s probably not worth considering.

 

***

The day we found out we were going to debut was notable for a number of reasons. The first, obviously, is that everyone was ecstatic. Someone had to stop Yuna from screaming lest she damage her voice. Again, it’s not easy to explain if you’ve never been through the process. It’s like if you’ve been driving through a dark tunnel for hours, so long you’ve forgotten where you began, focused only on the little pinprick of light in the distance and then having the sky open up above you and the sun is shining and you’re filled with warmth you haven’t experienced for years. 

The second reason is that we now were all going to move in together. It was difficult to focus on packing. The thought of waking up to see a sleepy, pajama-clad Ryujin sent spasms of fear through me-- though it’s often difficult for me to differentiate between fear and excitement.

And when we all stepped into the tiny dorm, I remembered we were going to have to pick roommates, and I had to scramble around looking for the bathroom. And, just my luck, I ended up being put with Ryujin (that’s the third reason this day’s so memorable). There would be no respite now. No way to relieve the pressure. 

None of this phased her. If anything, she looked upset that she hadn’t gotten the single-room. 

Then, fourth, I went to take a shower that night, and when I opened the door, I saw Ryujin halfway through disrobing. And I wonder if I stared for a little too long before closing the door and yelling “Sorry!” It’s not like the little peak of her naked body was arousing-- it was nice, to be sure-- but the intimacy it indicated was. We were more than teenagers bound together by a common goal, now we were family. 

I think I had a kind of existential crisis. Was this really what I had in store for the next decade? To be constantly under threat of exploding from the repressed feelings? 

We watched a movie that night, the five of us, and things worked out so that Ryujin sat next to me on the couch. I tried to keep my sweating under control, but I’m not sure how successful I was. Our legs touched, and I didn’t dare move because betray how uncomfortable I really was. And I realized I could look forward to this dynamic for years to come. She put her head on my shoulder at one point, which made every muscle in my body tense, and she said, “Yeji, I’m so glad we’ll get to spend all our time together.” 

“You too,” I managed to blurt out, but then I had to excuse myself to the restroom for what must’ve been the tenth time since we’d arrived and splash cold water on my face. Why was I like this? I’d succeeded. Everything I’d ever wanted stood in front of me, but my chest was pounding and cold beads of sweat dotted the back of my neck. 

But also, if I couldn’t be with Ryujin, nothing else mattered. That was the paradox. As much as it was exhausting to be around her, I needed her. She healed me. She could understand me. My thoughts belonged to her, even if I could never share them.

 

*** 

Ryujin gave me the top bunk-- I always forgot that I was older than her. She turned off the lights and said, “Yeji, can I ask you kind of a weird question?”

“Yeah,” I said, paralyzed. It was just the two of us in this small, dark room.

“Have you ever kissed a guy before?”

I stiffened. “Um, n-no. Why do you… Why do you ask?”

“It’s just I’ve never either, and we’re probably not going to be around anyone but us for a while now. So, I don’t know, I guess I’m having, like, regrets.”

“Y-you’re a catch, Ryujin. You don’t have to worry about that.”

“I guess this is the kind of thing only roommates get to discuss.”

“Ha, totally.”

Minutes passed. Then, from the black air, Ryujin asked, “Would you kiss me, Yeji?”

You could’ve told me the building was burning down, and it would’ve been less adrenaline. 

“W-what?”

“I guess I just want to know what it feels like.” Did she sound nervous? I probably don’t need to mention how out of character it was for her to be saying something like this. I’d never in my life seen her express any kind of doubt or anxiety, even at the most important evaluations-- she had nothing to be worried about in that regard, to be fair. “It’s like… we’re family now. And it’s no big deal if you don’t want to. I just, I guess I’m in an emotionally vulnerable state and…” she trailed off.

I thought for a dangerously long time about saying no. I felt like I might pass out, or maybe I’d throw up  _ on  _ her. But, thankfully, I managed to convince myself that I could never forgive myself if I didn’t oblige her, so I clambered down the ladder and knelt by her face. I could smell her fruity shampoo and see the little ridges of her lips. 

Then I bent down and put my mouth to hers, just for an instant, then pulled back, my mind strangely clear. 

“Thank you,” she said. 

“Anything for you.”

***

It was inevitable that I wouldn’t be able to sleep. The sensation of it played in my mind over and over, filling me with a kind of simmering heat. 

At some point, I heard Ryujin creep out of the room. Then I heard a kind of retching from the hallway. She was sick. I forced myself out of bed and stepped down the hall. When I swung the bathroom door open, Ryujin was bent over the toilet with a finger in her throat.


	2. Ryujin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ryujin contains multitudes.

_...I got stuck _

_ On death and dying and obsessive thoughts that won’t let up _

_ It makes me feel like I’m about to throw up _

-PUP, “Morbid Stuff”

 

The therapist my mom sent me to says I have a tendency to “compartmentalize,” meaning that emotions kind of bubble around inside me and then explode violently every so often-- usually in unhealthy ways. For the most part, I agree with that assessment. This whole ordeal with Yeji is perfect evidence.

Here’s an example of what I mean: when I first showed up in the dance class Yeji was in, the one with all the girls who were slated to debut, I played it cool. I introduced myself to her, shook her hand, etc. The things normal people do. But on the inside, alarms were going off left and right, bright and red and blaring. 

I’d watched her from a distance, everyone did. When someone is that beautiful, they kind of rise above everyone else, and her above-average height accentuated that perception. I wouldn’t say I had a crush on her. I just knew she was beautiful and talented. But it’s an entirely different situation when she’s right there in front of me, speaking to me in her heart-meltingly beautiful voice with a cute little stutter every so often. It’s got this kind of squeaky quality, her voice, which is irresistible. 

But I managed to act casual all through the meeting with management and all through the class, even though Yeji kept bumping into me and distracting me with her immaculate dancing. It wasn’t until after I’d gotten back to my dorm room that I couldn’t take it anymore and had to purge in the tiny little bathroom down hall. My therapist-- whose name is Soo-ah, by the way-- insists I call it purging. She says it’s harder to romanticize it if I stick to a clinical term like that. 

I won’t talk about my bulimia much-- another example of Soo-ah’s preferred verbiage-- don’t worry. I only bring it up to show how these unhealthy “explosions,” generally manifest. There are millions of girls with eating disorders, and the only reason you’re hearing about my specific eating disorder is that I happen to also be an international celebrity. 

I should mention, though, that it isn’t “Bulimia Nervosa,” which involves body dysmorphia and binge eating. I don’t really have body dysmorphia, which of course isn’t to say I’m not insecure at all in that regard, it’s just that I see  _ myself _ in the mirror, as I’ve heard anorexics and other bulimics don’t. And certainly I’m not a binge eater, but maybe that’s just because I’ve been a trainee for so long and had my access to food strictly managed. This job is a disease to my disease. 

It’s only that sometimes I feel an unbearable urge to get everything inside me outside of me, if that makes any sense. I keep it all in: thoughts, feelings, actions, and eventually the pressure needs to be relieved. And the exhaustion that follows a good bout of purging is totally addictive. It makes my mind clear, whereas most of the time it’s filled with everything that I could say or do, but also the crippling doubt that keeps me from doing it. 

All this, Soo-ah would point out, sounds like I’m trying to romanticize my illness. Like I’m trying to make myself sound unique and special, or that I’m trying to justify it to myself. But I promise I’m not. Believe me, no one wants to shirk this disability more than me. I’m not only saying that because that’s what I’m supposed to say, either. I’ve weighed the pros and cons and decided definitively that I don’t want to live like that. Throwing up so often is awful for your voice, you know. There’s only so long I can go before someone important catches on, either because I start to sound like I’ve been smoking a pack of cigarettes a day for years or because I get so malnourished I have to be admitted to a hospital. 

 

***

Anyway, after that first class with Yeji, I called Soo-ah and asked for an emergency session. I started seeing her after my mom caught me. She (my mom) swung open the door to our bathroom one night-- our apartment is pretty small and we all share one bathroom, my parents, sister, and I-- and she caught me in the act. I wonder if I left the door unlocked in a kind of Freudian slip, as in maybe I wanted, subconsciously, to be caught. Like a kind of cry for help. 

Her face when she realized what I was doing will be with me until the day I die. She looked like she was melting. The closest comparison I can think of is “The Scream” by Munch, but even that doesn’t do her sheer horror justice. 

She took me into the kitchen and explained in a very terse voice that she was going to get me the help I needed. That she wasn’t going to tell the company or anyone else, for that matter. We could keep it between us. 

Soo-ah had the quality all good therapists have of being easy to talk to. She could sit with her left leg crossed over her right, a notepad in her lap, and you’d have no choice to but to divulge your deepest darkest secrets. There are a lot of parallels you can draw between vomiting and therapy, that way. There’s a kind of tease of nausea in the lead-up to a therapy appointment, then a violent, cathartic expulsion, followed by intense satisfaction. 

All of which is to say I needed that emergency session more than anything. I rushed into her office and didn’t wait for her to greet me before jumping into a sort of tirade:

“You’re really not going to believe this. It’s like there’s some conspiracy going on to make me as miserable as possible. I mean it. In addition to the absurd level of stress I’m already under, they’re putting me in the same group as  _ her.  _ Have I told you about her? Probably not, she was barely on my radar until now. But when I’m up close to her like that, it’s totally different. It’s like I can’t see straight. It makes me nauseous in more ways than one, you know what I mean?”

“Ryujin,” she said, her voice level and assertive, “you’re going to have to slow down. I’m not entirely sure what you’re saying.”

I took a deep breath. “Okay. Well, you know how I’ve talked about not really being attracted to anyone before? You know, romantically. I think I know what it feels like now. Like a sort of itching in my stomach. She’s beautiful, Soo-ah. You can’t understand. You get desensitized to beauty in a way, working in entertainment, but she’s, like, transcended beauty. And now I have to watch her in the mirror every day. Oh god, they’re going to figure me out. I’m going to get kicked out. Oh god.”

“Alright, I’m starting to understand. You have a crush. On a girl.”

“I know. It’s confusing. You know how I am, and you know that I don’t do well with ‘confusing,’ or with strong emotions in general.”

“And you’re worried that they’ll kick you out? Like out of the company? Why would they do that?”

“For any number of reasons. It could be for my same-sex attraction. Or because my voice is going to sound like a ninety-year-old’s before long. Maybe I’ll just die of malnutrition, or of fright.”

“You’re catastrophizing.”

“I hate when you use words like that.”

“Sorry, it’s just we need to think about things rationally here. We’ll come up with a plan of action.”

“A plan of action?”

“Yeah. For you to get the girl.”

“I don’t think you understand, Soo-ah. I don’t want to get the girl. I want to not think about the girl at all. I want to never see her again.”

“Don’t talk like that. That’s not a recipe for happiness, that attitude, I can tell you that. And I don’t mean that you have to, like, woo her, or anything. It’s just that I want you to be comfortable around her. Isn’t that what you want?”

“Yeah, and I want to be able to fly, too.”

She breathed air out of her nose and looked out the window. It was raining. “What if you asked her out.”

“Aren’t you listening to anything I’ve been saying?”

“Calm down. Not on a date. You could say something like, ‘I just want to get to know my group-mate better,’ or something. Casual. Get to know her better. You can’t be afraid of what you’re intimately familiar with.”

“Saying things like ‘intimately familiar’ isn’t helping. And you’re underestimating my capability of fear.”

“Try it.”

***

That’s how Yeji and I ended up in lotus position next to each other, trying to focus on only our breathing, which of course was impossible for me. I closed my eyes, thinking that if I couldn’t see her then I’d be able to think logically about the situation. I failed, though, to take into consideration the smell of her. She smelled like flowers, and those flowers bloomed in my mind, snaking up the black interior of my skull. Totally impossible to focus. 

At some point I felt a strange urge to take off all my clothes. A strong urge that I had to consciously suppress. It wasn’t some kind of sexual impulse, either. It didn’t matter that Yeji was there. It was more like I wanted to be totally open, let the Buddha see me and all my flaws, hear all my thoughts. I wanted to finally smash through the facade and show myself, my true self. 

But of course I couldn’t strip in front of all these people.

***

After the ‘date,’ I felt the unbearably strong but all too familiar need for  _ release.  _ It was bad this time. It spun and twirled in my stomach, constantly reminding me that something was wrong. I needed to calm down by any means necessary. 

When I get into states like these, I can’t focus on anything else. I’ll try to put it off, think about only what’s directly in front of me-- a technique Soo-ah tried to teach me-- but then while I’m working on some math problem or listening to a history lecture, the thought of me sitting next to Yeji will spring up in my head unbidden, and I’ll double over with psychic pain.

And this was the worst it’d been in a while. I was desperate. At least, that’s how I justify what I did.

For reasons that are totally unexplainable and unreasonable, I thought it’d be a good idea to sneak into Yeji’s room. She was spending the weekend with her family, so I knew her room would be empty. There are no locks on trainees’ doors, either. 

I crept in Saturday afternoon, making sure no one could see me. I could feel the smell of her on my skin, the little motes of dust created by her-- they say the majority of dust is comprised of dead skin particles. My heart thumped in my chest like a bass drum. 

I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted to accomplish. Simply being there while she wasn’t was invigorating like nothing else. It was as if I was inside her head, and she could read my thoughts while I was here, and I could read hers. The discarded articles of clothing littering the floor looked like a map. An atlas of innermost feelings, desires. Maybe this was what Soo-ah meant when she said “intimately familiar.”

Again, the motive cause of this decision was and still is unknown to me. It simply felt like the right thing to do in the misty haze of total infatuation. Similarly, I have no idea why I chose to steal a pair of tiny athletic shorts from her. If I had to guess, I’d say the reason was that the smell of them was narcotic, and I think I wanted to have some small piece of her, a memento to prove that this was, in fact, real. Validation.

 

***

I remember little to nothing about the day our debut was confirmed, other than, of course, when Yeji kissed me. Prior to that, the scenes all kind of blur together. I remember sitting next to her while we all watched a movie, and I can remember someone catching me in the shower, though I didn’t see who it was. 

More than anything, I remember feeling a kind of melancholy. In general I’m not a very melancholic person, I tend towards anxiety and self-destruction rather than self-pity, and I’d been expecting to react with fear to the revelation that Yeji and I would be sharing a room. Internal fear, of course. But in reality, I was depressed. This whole course of events was like a terminal diagnosis. I’d crash and burn under the stress, I was sure. This career wasn’t going to work out after all. 

So when I asked Yeji to kiss me, to have her  _ first  _ kiss with me, it was like how a suicidal person will give all their money away-- I didn’t need the security anymore. I certainly didn’t expect her to say yes. And when she knelt down beside me, I think that was the closest I’d ever been to her. Every inch of me screamed. Her lips touched mine, and I had to scratch myself hard to keep from yelling out-- so hard I drew blood, I discovered later on. 

My traitorous mouth whimpered, “Thank you.”

And she said, “Anything for you.”

I waited as long as I possibly could-- i.e., not very long-- before sprinting out of bed and down the hall and shoving a finger down my throat. The key to purging is to be able to find your uvula quickly, which, if touched, will make you vomit no matter what. It’s an emetic built into the human body, and you get an intrinsic sense of where it dangles at the back of your throat if you use it enough.

The retching and gagging felt so good that I didn’t hear the footsteps coming toward me. I was, in fact, about to go for another round of regurgitation when I felt a hand on my back. Panic went through me like ice water.

“What are you doing, Ryujin?” Yeji asked. Her voice was light and calm. 

“I was… sick.”

“Your hand was in your mouth.”

“...”

“Was I really that gross?” she asked, smiling.

“No no no. It’s just, I…”

“It’s okay, I understand. Here, we can talk in our room.”

***

She sat on the edge of my bed and patted the space next to her. I sat next to her, feeling the warmth from her body like a burn.

“My cousin has bulimia,” she said.

This was what you might call the nightmare scenario. “Really, Yeji, it’s not what it looks like. I was sick. I think the stress is getting to me.”

“What’s stressful?”

“You know, the impending debut. The move.”

“Can I tell you something?” she asked. I nodded. “This is the most calm I’ve been in a while. I don’t really know why. Normally, when I’m around you, I can’t see clearly. My heart pounds in my chest and I sweat like it’s a hundred degrees. But I feel really good right now. Confident.”

“What are you saying?”

“I… I think I’m in love with you, Ryujin.” Definitely the nightmare scenario. 

“...” I tried to speak but found I couldn’t.

“Maybe it’s that, like, I only just realized how  _ human  _ you are, if that makes any sense. Like, how real you are. You have thoughts and feelings that I could never hope to understand. And that’s really comforting for some reason.”

“You’re…”

“In love with you. Yeah, I think so. Ever since you gave me that band-aid when I cut my finger. Remember that?” I shook my head. “Huh, maybe I imagined that. Anyway, yes, I’m in love with you. For sure.”

I stood up and went to my drawer and found the shorts I’d stolen from her. “I took these from your room when you weren’t there,” I said. 

“Um…”

“I don’t really know why, either. I just needed to be closer to you. You’re really pretty, Yeji, and I also can’t think when I’m around you. I wanted to be close to you without being close to you. I don’t know what I’m saying.”

“Come here,” she said, and I obeyed. She wrapped her long, slender arms around me. “Let’s just lie down together and be close. You don’t have to understand. I don’t really understand.”

“I’ve never slept in the same bed with anyone except my sister.”

“We’re sisters now.”

And she pulled me into the mattress, curled around me, and kissed my cheek. I fell asleep faster than I had in years. 

**Author's Note:**

> What the hell is wrong with me? Why can't I write a cute story about k-pop idols that doesn't involve dark shit?


End file.
